The Frog's Eyebrows
by sierrac
Summary: It's jazz and gin when their car breaks down at a dusty Connecticut roadhouse, where Mary and Richard meet some new American friends and learn some new American lingo.
1. Appleknocker

**Timeline: **Mary and Richard got married as planned in July, 1919; the Christmas special never happened. This is August 1919, on their honeymoon road trip across America in an apple green Isotta Fraschini automobile that Richard promptly breaks a mere three hours outside of New York.

**AN: This is an outtake from the _Roadhouse_ chapter of my story 'Dispatches from America.' Thanks to MrsTater for the suggestion! Also thanks to the "Flapper-to-English Dictionary" (google that phrase and it should come up), an endless source of inspiration and amusement.**

* * *

**1. 'Appleknocker'**

_Appleknocker, _ _ noun: 1. A hick or hayseed, 2. A rural destination. _

Mary perched on the creaky wooden stair of the cheaply-constructed Victorian inn, contemplating her shoes with displeasure. She had been delighted with her New York purchase: the patent leather sparkled so in the gleam of the streetlamps, the straps perfectly crossed her ankles. Richard had commented that the heel, higher than was available in English shops, made her legs curve in a most fetching manner. Now, not only did she regret the higher rise of the shoe as her feet throbbed in protest from the long walk, she regretted not bringing along a ladies' maid to clean them from the highway dust that had formed an impenetrable layer over the leather so they looked more of a dirty gray color. And most of all she regretted not bringing a chauffeur, perhaps one who would not attempt to push their automobile to its uppermost capabilities simply to "see how she handled."

Jazz music blared from the open windows of the bar on the next level, carried to her ears on a warm summer breeze as the squawk of an especially obnoxious rooster might jar her from sleep at far too early an hour, which was why she was sitting at this safe distance outside. On the horizon, a motorist approached on the road beyond the parking lot, headlights sweeping along and over her before continuing around the bend – how she envied their mobility.

The music and the road noise all but cancelled out the voices of Richard and the mechanic, standing over to the side of the stairs between the roadhouse and the gas station, deep in discussion as they had been for the last five minutes. Occasionally, between notes, a phrase would reach her ear and she could not help but smile at the difficulty that was entirely his own fault.

"Eee-zow-tah Frah-skee-nee" Richard phoneticized, his back to her, as the mechanic's uncomprehending mouth attempted to silently mirror the words. "It's Italian."

Mary rested her chin on her hand, her eyes drifting up to the stars above as she strained to hear more of this comic exchange. "…ought to get yourself a Model T. Yessir, now that I can fix..." That did not bode well, she thought warily as a particularly loud trumpet shriek punctuated her sense of foreboding. "…Smoke, but we didn't think much of it…" as Richard gestured to indicate the eruption they had witnessed. "…A gasket in the heat…" the mechanic's heavy New England accent wafted to her ears. "…Of course not, I was driving at a perfectly reasonable speed." At this Mary laughed aloud. Richard looked over his shoulder to glare in her direction.

She met his miserable look with a highly-amused 'who me?' raise of her eyebrows, her face the absolute picture of innocence. His eyes rolled heavenward and remained there for a moment as she watched him draw in a steadying breath, reluctantly returning to the apparently useless mechanic and their apparently fruitless conversation. She returned to searching for the big dipper in the sky and tapping her foot unwilling to the beat emanating from the inn behind her.

"Mary Crawley?" she heard her name called from across the parking lot in the other direction. "Is that you?" She turned her head as the excitable voice took shape in the form of a slender brunette with a fashionable bob haircut and an organza pink day dress who emerged from the shadows and into the light that surrounded the front steps like a halo.

"Louise Clark?" Mary asked in answer.

"What are you doing here in the God-forsaken appleknocker?" The young woman asked, her hands held out in question.

"Appleknocker?" Mary echoed, confused.

"Joint in the middle of nowhere!" Louise replied with exasperation.

"I would ask the same of you!" Mary replied, standing up to embrace her friend.

The two girls touched cheeks in the gesture of a kiss, then Louise drew back. "You're not here by yourself, are you?" she asked in puzzlement.

"Rather. I've lost my husband to the mechanic and our automobile to the highway, four miles that way," she said, indicating the direction from which they had come.

"You're married?" the girl exclaimed, her sharp green narrowing in reproach. "And where was I?"

"It was… a quiet affair." Mary said, thinking back to their simple wedding. After Lavinia's death, no one was in an especially lavish mood, so she had consented to a modest ceremony in the parish church and a breakfast at Downton with family only. And though she had begun to warm to Richard after the funeral, after he had taken her home that day not to Downton but to Haxby and proved how truly on her side he really was, she nevertheless felt her initial reluctance precluded an extravagant wedding celebration.

"The family didn't approve," Louise surmised. At Mary's look of acknowledgement, she added, "Your people are incredibly hard to please. I always thought you could show up with the Prince of Wales on your arm and they would find something to object to!"

"As if Granny would accept someone from such a _new_ dynasty." They shared a laugh about the Dowager Countess, whose razor-sharp wit Louise had become accustomed to during her brief stay at Downton before the war.

"Prince of Wales or not, I'm sure your new husband is young and handsome and _terribly, terribly highborn,"_ Louise said, her American accent slipping into an imitation of Granny's particularly clipped diction on the last words.

"Well," Mary began, "he is handsome." At that moment she turned slightly to notice that Richard had wrapped up his chat with the garage-owner and was standing next to her. She blushed slightly at her ignominious introduction.

"I don't know whether to be flattered by what you said, or offended by what you left out," he commented, his hand coming to rest on the narrowest part of her waist.

"Meet Richard Carlisle," she told Louise wryly, "and you can judge for yourself."

"Very handsome indeed," Louise nodded to Mary as she extended her hand in greeting. "The frog's eyebrows!"

"So pleased to have your endorsement," Richard replied as he shook her hand. "I assume," he added, not entirely sure of the new expression's positivity.

"You should be," Mary said to him, "Louise and I are technically cousins, in some distant sort of way. So that's at least one member of my family that likes you," she teased.

"Two, I should hope. Unless _your_ esteem is too much to ask for," he replied with a smirk.

"I was counting myself as a Carlisle in that instance," she said breezily, knowing it would please him. "Mostly, I married him because I wouldn't have to change the monogram on my luggage," she modified to Louise – after all, she wouldn't want Richard's ego to get too outsized.

"As good a reason as any!" the girl said.

"If you'll pardon me," Richard interjected, "my new friend Bif the Mechanic is going to attempt to drag the Isotta back to his garage. Given his knowledge of European automobiles, I think it may be better off left on the roadside."

"How on earth will he do that?" Louise asked.

"He has a truck specifically for that purpose, with cables and a platform that lets one car pull another. It should be fascinating – would you two like to come and observe?"

"No thank you," Mary said with certainty, "I refuse to go one step further on that dusty highway."

"Then you can order me a dirty martini at the bar instead," he said with a wink.

"What an idea!" exclaimed Louise as she grabbed Mary's arm and dragged her up the stairs. "Let's get plastered."

* * *

They secured a large wooden table in the far corner of the bar, and much to Mary's relief, the room was pleasantly raucous but their spot was quiet enough to not have to shout. Too much. It was fairly crowded, and as the waiter accepted their orders, he glared at them for taking up such a sizable table with only two of them. "Don't worry," Louise explained to her once he walked away, "we'll have a real gang soon."

Mary sipped her sidecar and attempted to suppress a wince at the proportion of liquor to lemon juice. She was forced to enlighten to the waiter about how to make one, as it seemed no one in America had yet heard of the cognac concoction dreamt up by a US army captain in Paris during the war. Though if this was the result, she was ready to give up trying to spread the word. Noticing her look, Louise told her to order a gimlet next time, as "even these simps couldn't mess up gin and lime!" Deciding to co-opt Richard's martini instead, Mary tried that only to realize there was far too much vermouth. Gimlets next time indeed.

Over their drinks, she and Louise reminisced about Downton and caught up on all the gossip, as Louise was familiar with the main players. She had come over to England for a season right before the start of the war, much in the fashion Cora Crawley had years before, her family hoping to see her married off to some English aristocrat with an appropriate title. But Mary had known from their first meeting that this was not a girl who would go that route without a fight. The pretty girl with the wide green eyes was not much older than Sybil, and the similarities did not end there – they both shared a rebellious streak, though Louise had none of the starry-eyed optimism of Mary's youngest sister. No, Louise was a cold-hearted American cynic. Which Mary had appreciated very much when they first encountered each other at one of Aunt Rosamond's parties, and even more when she had invited the other girl to visit Downton for a break from the debutant circuit.

And Louise caught her up with the American side of her family. They shared a far-removed family connection on Mary's mother's side, and Grandmother had taken an interest in Louise since the girl's mother had died prematurely in Paris – rumor had it the woman was in the process of running away with her French artist lover, though Mary had never worked up the courage to confirm this bit of intelligence.

"So Sybil married the chauffeur and is living with him and his mother in a cottage in Ireland," Mary said, concluding her story for her audience of one.

"Di mi!" Louise cackled, which Mary took to be a slang version of 'dear me.' "And what do you call him when he comes to visit? The chauffer title or the first name?"

"Neither – they aren't allowed back."

"What a barney for the lovely old Crawley family," Louise said absently, her gaze travelling to the front entrance.

"Barney?"

"A scandal!"

"In that case, yes," Mary replied as she noticed two newcomers approaching the table. One was an impeccably-dressed young man in his mid-twenties, dark and averagely handsome. His three-piece pinstriped suit immediately made Mary suspicious in such heat, as most of the men in the stifling bar had shed their jackets and waistcoats in deference to the summer humidity. His companion was a tall, chic woman, about Mary's age, in all black, whose shock of pale white skin seemed translucent where it was revealed between her black hair and her black necklace, between her long black sleeves and her black nail polish. The effect was almost vampish, or perhaps the look of a silent movie queen – her powdered face and dark lipstick certainly enhanced the fact.

"I must tell Dad the tale of 'Sybil and the Servant' some time, perhaps in comparison he won't think I'm such a loose cannon," Louise said as she rose to greet the strangers. "Why hello, you rascals!"

The vamp's face widened into an unusually bright smile given her attire, and Mary realized the whole outfit was more of a costume than a lifestyle. Then her gaze returned to Louise and she was quite surprised to see the dapper young man tilt the girl back and kiss her directly on the lips, a deep, passionate, and rather messy kiss for a public place, all things considered.

She blushed when she realized the kiss was going to continue for a while, and turned her attention back to the girl in the dark dress, holding out her hand to introduce herself. "Mary Carlisle," she said, dropping the title as she had learned to do over the course of their American journey – any mention of 'Lady' or 'Sir' in this country resulted in a solid half-hour of gushing about the romanticism of the English aristocracy by the title-less American rich, most of whom were informed of such matters only by the caricatures of the English upper-class portrayed in plays and novels. "I am Louise's very distant cousin," she explained.

"Yes of course," the girl replied politely, in a sweet voice so incongruous with her appearance. "I'm Ella Saunders. And that," she indicated the man still attached to Louise's mouth, "would be Reggie Lawson. Or maybe it will be 'dear departed Reggie' if he doesn't come up for air soon."

"He'll either expire from lack of air or that heavy suit in this heat," Mary commented.

"If you girls are trying to get my goat," he replied, finally standing upright, "it isn't going to work." Reggie spoke in a low drone, an affected imitation of the New England elite, and Mary wondered if his natural speaking voice was not really as bright and friendly as Ella's all-American smile. He removed his hand from Louise's waist to shake Mary's hand vigorously, and then quickly returned to sweep Louise around in a circle at the edge of the table. They knocked the chair of a man sitting behind them, giggling at their error. "And I'm not even pie-eyed yet," he commented. "Waiter!"

He sat down in the opposite bench seat wedged against one wall, pulling Louise with him to rest on his lap. Mary had to control her shock at the gesture – no moralist herself, she was still surprised at the boldness of American youth. Ella perched delicately on a chair next to her. They gave their drink orders – gimlets all around, though Mary was only halfway through her first drink, and she chatted with Ella as the couple across were otherwise occupied.

"Oh they do this all the time," Ella was saying, indicating the frantic caresses, "every blow, every dimbox. Just try to separate them, I dare you."

Feeling like she was trying to comprehend a foreign language, Mary gave up on asking for definitions. "Are they to be married?"

"Hardly!" Louise piped up, turning her head around to face them.

"Well that's one way to do it," Ella commented. "The only thing that will pull you two apart from your petting party: the 'm' word!"

As they laughed, Mary glanced over her shoulder to see Richard walk into the room at the far entrance, his eyes scanning the crowd for her. "Excuse me," she said as she stood up, grabbing his martini glass and her gimlet and walking in his direction. She narrowly avoided spilling some as she wound her way around the many couples packed in the middle of the room, their legs kicking and arms shaking in one of the peculiar new dances.

"Apparently we've stumbled into some kind of 'petting party,'" she said as she handed him his drink, "whatever that is."

"Oh I've read about that in my flapper-to-English dictionary," Richard commented, slinging back his martini in two gulps and placing the glass on the bar. "I believe it's some sort of illicit practice popular with the flaming youth," he said sarcastically as his hands circled her waist and drew her firmly against him. He leaned down, his lips brushing her ear and whispered: "As if your generation invented sex."

She pressed into him, her thoughts flashing to the sloppy kisses and inexpert caresses of her tablemates. Mary breathed in the scent of the dusty road and his cologne and relished the sure, steady grip on her waist, not at all envious of her cousin's clumsy attempts to flout convention. "We're just the first to trot it out in public," she murmured.

"That, I don't mind," he replied as he pulled back slightly, taking the glass from her hand and putting it on the bar next to his empty one. "Speaking of trotting…" he said, his eyes turning to the dancers engaged in a rather boisterous version of the fox trot as the band started a new song from their perch against the far wall. His arm snaked further around her waist as she raised her hand to meet his, and he guided her backwards in a twirl to makeshift dance floor, which was apparently everywhere.

They threaded through the crowd, their steps in perfect alignment so Mary felt for a minute as though she were floating, albeit on a current of stifling and smoky air. The place was hot, and the music ever so slightly off-key, and as her shoes moved over the imperfect, rutted wooden floors, she thought how this was nothing like the world of dinner jackets and polished parquet they had left behind in England, and how everyone seemed to be having a marvelous time.

It was a dizzying cacophony, but also a kind of escape, and the swinging beat spurred her to bounce just a little higher than she normally would with each step. Miraculously Mary did not mind very much their delay, now that they were here, if they could only dance so easily together all night. But the tempo was fast and the room was packed, and even Richard's skilled direction could not prevent them from crashing into other dancers or pieces of furniture in the din. One particularly vicious bump threw her entirely off-balance, and she looked up to the offending couple to find Reggie and Louise laughing, their intervention obviously intentional.

"Sorry old pal," Reggie said to the older man, "but my girl demanded to cut in on this one." He handed Louise's hand to Richard, who smiled graciously and spun her around, though Mary could tell he was less than keen to switch partners at that particular moment. As was she, though she accepted Reggie's advance and permitted him to sweep her away in the other direction in strides syncopated with the rhythm of the band.

The young man's fingertips curled at an unpleasant angle into her waist, and his flimsy hold of her hand was disagreeably wilting, though she had to concede his feet were nimble with the movements, as if he had been born doing a two-step to a jazz tune. "I thought I'd better rescue you from Father Time," he said with a grin wide as the spacing of his pinstripes as he danced her around the room.

"From what?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Any man over thirty," Reggie explained. "Past it."

"And a woman over thirty would be 'Mother Time'?" she inquired, realizing she was near the threshold herself.

Reggie turned her around and then indulged in a dip, before replying, "No, that sad state of affairs is called a 'Rock of Ages.'"

The dip and the colloquialism made her laugh, though it turned slightly rueful at the idea that such a term might refer to her in a couple of years.

"And a young woman?" she asked, returning upright.

"A sip, a weed, a barlow, a biscuit," his words came in time to the music, and Mary could almost imagine him snapping his fingers like the overly-enthusiastic jazz fans she had witnessed at nightclubs in New York.

"And a young man?"

"A bell polisher, a brooksy, a hopper."

Mary looked at him skeptically. "I can't understand a word you people say!" she admitted frankly.

"You gotta get with the lingo, kid," he said, the grin still plastered on his face as he spun her with great flourish, then came to a halt along with the music.

And which term applied to Reggie, she wondered, unsure of the nuances separating each expression. She made a note to ask someone later, resolving that whatever word meant 'harmless poseur' would likely be appropriate. As a trumpet blast signaled the start of the next dance, Mary slipped her hand from her partner's easily, only to find it surrounded by Richard's iron grasp. "This one's mine, _old pal_," he called to Reggie over her shoulder as he drew her away.

"The dance or me?" she asked, amused.

The music slowed considerably, and Richard led her in a dance they had learned only recently called the Camel Walk, one that varied a waltzing walk with decelerated fox trot steps – but the most scandalous part was that the woman rested her head on the man's shoulder. It sounded romantic; in reality, they were less than successful at it. They had attempted to teach each other this particular dance after observing several couples on the _Mauretania_ engaging in it, though their efforts were somewhat scuppered by the rocking of the boat from side to side and Mary's impaired vision with her face buried in the hollow of his neck. During a particularly high swell she had managed to kick him in the shin while he simultaneously ran her into the corner of the desk in their stateroom, and they had vowed to only ever attempt the step on solid land.

But all appeared smooth sailing now, Mary enjoying the return of her rightful partner in place of the jive-talking Reggie, especially for this. The raw music was delectably improper, slow as the rotation of the earth and thick as molasses, and it seemed to colonize the air around them, so they weren't just dancing, but swimming in it, utterly surrounded by the humidity of the summer and the boom of the incessant drum beat. She felt Richard press his face to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair, and she wanted to tell him to watch where they were going, before his arm tightened around her and she decided it didn't really matter.

"Any luck with the motor?" she asked as he spun her at the corner.

"Well…" he began sullenly. "Bif managed to get it to the garage, but said it would take anywhere from three hours to three days to repair. My hopes for American efficiency are dashed."

"Perhaps they are only efficient with their own machinery, not ours."

"If it was a Model T, we would be on our way to Newport right now."

"Then maybe," she began, placing a subtle kiss to his collarbone over his shirt and thankful she was not wearing lipstick like the other girls, "I'm glad we don't have a Model T." She stroked her hand down his shoulder in a knowing caress, enjoying the more secretive touches over Louise's overt public display. "Where will we sleep?" she asked suddenly. "The corner booth is occupied…"

He laughed gently in response. "Fortunately they have rooms upstairs and I managed to secure the last one. A popular stopping off point," he mused. "I already took some bags up."

"I suppose it will have to do," Mary said, not entirely disappointed at spending one more night alone before visiting Grandmother in Newport.

"Unless you prefer the backseat of the Isotta," Richard replied. "I'm told it's good for 'necking', but it would be less comfortable for sleep."

"I know what that means!" she said with no small degree of satisfaction, pleased to not be utterly out of touch with the modern slang.

He turned slightly so she could see the couple currently exploring the concept at their table. "So does cousin Louise."


	2. Half Cut

**2. 'Half-Cut'**

_Half-Cut,_ _adj: 1. To be happily intoxicated. See also: pie-eyed, oiled, plastered._

After the long wail of the saxophone and the dark, muddy chords of the piano had finally slowed their sensual rhythm, Mary and Richard reluctantly broke apart as quiet descended on the room and the band took a short break. They returned to their fashionable group at the corner table, with proper introductions all around this time, though Mary had the feeling Richard and Reggie would continue to be "old pal" to each other for the rest of the evening after their inauspicious first meeting on the dance floor.

When the waiter approached with another tray of gimlets, Louise finally pushed the young man away and turned her attention to the drink and her tablemates. "Cheers," she said, raising her glass, "to Connecticut roadhouses!" It was a toast they could all drink to, happily ensconced in the ramshackle Victorian inn, the perfect hideaway for Louise and her friends and the perfect rescue for Mary, Richard and the Isotta.

"Are you on your way to Newport as well?" Richard asked the group.

"Oh yes, it might as well be mandatory," Ella replied, her bright voice fighting to sound perpetually bored. "Long Island for the first half of the summer, Newport for the second, and so it goes in endless repetition until you're so weary you can't stand to look at yourself in the mirror for fear of glimpsing the boring old grummy you've become."

"It's more of a sleepy seaside town than a social destination?"

"There are parties," she sighed, "but it's all the same places and the same people, everywhere you go."

"Like that's different from New York!" Louise chimed in. "Manhattan's the same old people too."

"It just seems like there's more variety, somehow."

"Not like London," Louise recalled nostalgically. "A girl can keep secrets there." Mary snorted in response, though she quickly took a sip of her drink to hide the gesture, hoping no one noticed. "In London," the girl continued, "you never meet _every_body."

"Until you do." Mary objected. "And you suddenly realize the backlog of gossip you know about complete strangers, and they know about you."

Richard chuckled in agreement. "Word spreads faster than introductions can keep pace with, so even if you don't know everyone personally you know them by reputation."

"With you, I can never tell if you know them by reputation, or if you _create_ their reputation," Mary said.

"I never create," he replied in mock defensiveness. "I report."

"Is that the case in New York?" she asked the others. "Are all the gossipmongers vicious and utterly unscrupulous?" She kept the corner of her eye on Richard to see if he appreciated the backhanded compliment; his smirk told her he did.

"If they were, then you would have heard about me being fast and loose all the way over in England!" Louise exclaimed, taking pride too in the pejorative terms. Reggie, who had seemed previously unconcerned with small talk, was suddenly alert.

"These days, fast and loose is the only way to be respectable." He pronounced with the upturned chin of a philosopher. But the pose did not last long, the table's laughter at this strange reversal rather deflating the seriousness of his verdict. He looked between Louise and Ella, and added, "And you two are vying for who is the most respectable of them all!" At this Louise gave him a playful slap on the shoulder, which turned into a caress down his arm, and soon the make-out session was back in full swing.

Ella rolled her eyes and turned to Mary, asking, "Was she like this when she visited you in London?"

"Not exactly," Mary allowed, "though she was on the daring side. I remember plotting with her to outsmart the chaperones at a tea dance, when she wanted to waltz with the same man twice. So she bribed the orchestra with cakes and asked them to play the same song again, so she could claim that it was not in fact a second dance, but a repeat of the first."

"Sounds about right," Ella commented with a soprano laugh that Mary could only describe as adorable.

"It all sounds so innocent now," she said, "a world away."

"Not such a bad thing," Richard said. "I'd rather have jazz and gin than Strauss and scones."

"And a toast to that!" Louise cried from Reggie's lap. They all raised their now half-empty glasses, except Reggie, who hit his palm on the table with a bang to halt the others.

"Knock it off, dumbdora! You can't toast with a half empty glass," he stated emphatically, "or we'll be cursed for seven years straight."

"That's twice the penalty for walking under a ladder," Ella said, egging him on. "With no chance of parole."

"If I'm a dumbdora then you're all dumbbells. It's double the bad luck to let a toast go unfinished than to toast with half a glass."

"Applesauce," Reggie replied dismissively, "I've never heard that before."

As they bickered amongst themselves, Mary noticed the waiter battling through the crowd with another tray of drinks. Drinks that, curiously, she did not remember any of them actually ordering. "I believe the solution to our problem is on its way," she said, indicating the reinforcements about to appear.

"If there's one thing we can all agree on," Louise said, "it's that leaving half-finished drinks on the table during the arrival of new drinks is the worst luck of all." Everyone regarded each other for a beat, then quickly grabbed their glasses and threw back the rest of their gimlets in one sip, eager to make the liquor disappear before the waiter reached the table.

Richard caught Mary's eye, amused at the face she was making in response to the strength of the gin, and she raised her empty glass to his in a toast to adventure.

* * *

They had not expected an introduction to Newport society here beside a dusty highway in Connecticut, but that was exactly what they were getting. As the bar filled up with more and more people, their table felt like a department store counter at Christmas, with an endless stream of patrons stopping by to peruse the display before busily moving on.

There was Mrs. Cecelia Chester, with her French poodle and her Italian lover, both flaunted like summer's most fashionable accessories. Her corpulent figure and her Victorian hairstyle notwithstanding, the woman obviously placed a high emphasis on the stylishness of her companions. The lover was built like a Greek god, evident through the thin cotton shirt he wore this night – probably every night, Mary concluded – and after talking to him for two minutes, she realized he had the brains of Greek yoghurt. After sharing this observation with Richard, he pointed out that Mrs. Chester did not seem to mind.

There was Mr. Anthony Bloom, the recent Princeton graduate and do-nothing heir to a tinned cookie fortune, and his beautiful wife Mirabelle, two obvious aficionados of the new sport of sunbathing – when Ella's arm brushed against Mrs. Bloom's as they both reached for their drinks, the difference in pallor was as dramatic as a chess board. The couple had become so idle on Long Island, they explained, that they desperately needed a change from a sleepy beach town, which is why they were decamping to Newport to escape the crushing boredom of endless sun. When the season was through, they would then head to the South of France, followed by the holidays in Palm Beach.

There was Miss Edna Eubanks, a glamorous woman in her late 30s who, by way of greeting, performed a handstand on the floor in front of them – her signature move, Mary found out later. Miss Eubanks, however, did not stay long, for the handsome man she had kicked on her way down had gone from supreme irritation to delighted fascination by the time she was upright and smiling apologetically in his direction.

"Perhaps Newport won't be as dull and tedious as we thought," Mary whispered to Richard as the Miss Eubanks departed on the arm of her new gentleman to make way for the next customer, a pudgy man with spectacles as shiny as the bald top of his head.

"Dull and tedious are two very different things, my darling," he joked, "Newport might not be the former, but given the evidence, the latter is still very much a possibility."

Mary tried to hide her mirth from the others, but was not terribly successful. "Would you like to share your joke with the rest of the class, young lady?" the new guest beside her comically admonished.

"I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities," she replied to the table.

"Oh Dr. Tejay!" Ella scolded as she threaded her arm through his. "They're on their honeymoon, let them have their private moments."

"I wasn't born yesterday, you know," he said, "Everyone here is on their 'honeymoon,' at least they are when they come to me for prescriptions."

The man could only be described as round – his face was round, his cheeks were round, the gleaming top of his head was round, his spectacles were round. "Naughty, naughty, doctor," Ella said as she pulled him up in the direction of the dance floor. Or so Mary thought, until she watched them saunter off, arm in arm, into the inn's hallway. Now that was the oddest pairing she had seen so far, the tall, lithe vamp in all black with the short, stout doctor in a pink bowtie.

"I want another dance," Louise declared when they had gone and the band struck up a fresh note. Reggie moved to stand up, and she brushed right past him to offer her hand to Richard, who took it graciously, all the while sharing a look with Mary that said he would rather be dancing with her.

Reggie let a peevish expression mold his features into a frown for the briefest of moments, before a slight tilt of his head to the side cleared the slate and he smiled in Mary's direction. "Looks like it's you and me, kid," he said as he held out his hand.

His dexterous footwork continued to impress as his unappealing grip continued to annoy, but Mary had to admit she was having fun as they spun around and bumped into people. And she was starting to believe the gin was greatly improving her own footwork, as she managed to step on his toes only once.

When the music ended she noticed Ella had returned, whispering something in Louise's ear. "Come on," Louise called, taking Mary's elbow and tugging her out into the hall, "I've got to powder my nose." They treaded down the threadbare red carpet that lined the public parts of the old inn, walking past the pretty but faded French toile wallpaper that repeated all the way to the end of the building. Upon closer inspection, Mary saw that the delicate pink pattern was not in fact an ox in a charming French field in front of a Roman ruin, but a bucking bronco in an Old West rodeo ring populated by cowboys.

All three of them crammed into one of the tiny bathrooms, Mary assumed for the kind of gossip session she was so familiar with in the women's lounges during grand society balls. She always hated the giggling and whispered secrets, finding the whole thing profoundly silly and so interchangeable: she knew the same girls would be in the same powder room the next week, gushing over every detail of some new beau who had the same dreamy eyes as the last.

But no one attempted to gush about their boyfriends now, though the girl talk did turn to the usual sniping as they mutually agreed that Mirabelle Bloom's brown and green dress was hideous. Louise launched into a detailed analysis of its faults, as Ella pulled a tiny red metal pill box from her purse and placed it on the counter, scooped out some white powder with a miniature matching spoon and held it to her nose to inhale. "Dr. Tejay comes through again, the darling," Louise stopped her monologue to say.

"What is that?" Mary asked; it looked like white snuff, but she could not imagine anything so old-fashioned as that.

"It's a kind of nerve tonic," Ella replied, "called cocaine. My mother used it for years, and it really helped her anxiety."

"One of those cure-all things," Louise said as she reached for her own scoop. "It gives you the energy to dance all night long! And if you think you were half-cut with the gin…"

"Glad you're taking mine, sweetie, but I got some for everybody," Ella said, producing two additional pill boxes and handing them to each girl. "The doc said they're going to make it illegal soon, and we should stock up while we can."

"Fiddlesticks – they used to put this stuff in soda pop. He just wants you to buy more. But thanks all the same. Aren't you going to have some, cousin Mary?" Louise asked at her hesitation. "You must be awfully tired from your long walk down the highway. And it makes everything so much _fun_!"

"Well," she replied doubtfully, "if it's from a doctor…" She opened the box Ella had given her. "You just…?"

"Sniff!" Ella said behind her sunny smile. Scooping out only about half of what the other girls took, Mary gave a mental shrug, and followed the instructions.

* * *

Whatever it was, it hit her almost immediately, a kind of vitality coursing through her veins to the point that her nails pressed little crescents into her palm as she tried to constrain any indication of the effects showing to the outside world. Back at the table, Louise and Ella were chatting a mile a minute, all kinds of ebullient nonsense, and Mary struggled to follow the conversation and keep herself under control at the same time. This strange artificial energy seemed to draw the girls out even further, each utterly unselfconscious as they bombarded the table with the force of their personalities and conversation, but Mary found the opposite for herself – she was suddenly intensely aware of her own appearance, terribly concerned to seem normal and to look exceedingly interested in whatever they were saying.

"Are you alright?" Richard asked, leaning close to her. She turned to focus her attention on him, nodding too many times in rapt response, as an audience member caught up in the music might nod along to particularly rousing symphony.

His eyebrows knitted together in perplexity; the band struck up the notes of a familiar piece; "I love this song!" cried Louise and everyone seemed to jump up at once to descend on the dance floor.

It was a showcase for the trumpeter, who took the chance to show off his virtuosity to the lightening tempo while the piano crescendo up and down the bass scale and anchored the wail in a steady beat. The drummer just brushed the symbols – any more would be too much – and everyone seemed to be dancing like mad. Richard's deft hands on hers kept Mary from spinning too far off in any wrong direction, and she thought for a moment how ridiculous they all must look as the dancers broke apart and crashed back together in dizzying twirls. But keeping pace with the rhythm quickly consumed her reflections, and she danced, determined to stay with the beat.

She felt perilously free – a liberation she thought she might never know, back home in England; the pleasure in this was off-set by her anxiety at such a prospect. Whether this tightening in her throat, a kind of trepidation that mitigated her joy, was an effect of the powder or her own practiced restraint she could not tell, but, while she was enjoying herself, she could not do so with the complete abandon of Louise and her compatriots, who embraced the sultry air and the sliding repetition of the trumpet with such gusto. They were all dazzle and light, even through the haze of the room, utterly embedded in the moment in a way Mary could not even conceive. But she continued the fancy footwork with enthusiasm up until the very last note, when all the musicians came together in a warbling finale.

Most of the couples broke apart but she held Richard closer, even though she was sure he could hear the inhuman racing of her heart. With the music briefly paused and the previous song still ringing in her ears, she quickly found the silence too loud, the dim lights too bright; "Let's get some fresh air," she said and led him through to the center hallway, beyond the tatty screen door and out to the back porch.

It was tranquil on this side of the inn, the veranda that stretched the length of the building deserted. The land behind dropped off gently down to a grove of trees that banked a rocky creek; it was difficult to make out in the darkness but the sound of babbling water was unmistakable. The picture was serene but Mary was not as she leaned against the railing, her eyes darting quickly from the leaves of the wispy maple trees to the fireflies that sparked across the unkempt grass, to the stars in the sky and the dirt on the planked floor, trying to take in every detail and memorize it as if she would forget – she was suddenly very worried she would forget.

"It's so hard to hold on to every moment," she said as she leaned further against the banister and searched the night for any part of the tableaux she might have missed.

Richard stood behind her and placed a gentle hand at the small of her back. "I don't think you can," he said. "And anyone would be a fool to try."

She turned to look up at his eyes through the blackness, and she opened her mouth to tell him that was exactly what Louise and her friends were trying to do, to wring every last drop of life from every tangible moment, in a way that she was somehow unable to do herself. But the protest died on her lips as she thought that maybe he was right and moments were meant to pass, pleasantly undistinguished in time's march, and the ones that really mattered would live on in memory regardless of how hard one tried to grasp them or not.

"Are you alright?" he asked again, his forehead creasing in concern.

The creak of metal against wood caught her ear amid the sound of the crickets and the frogs, and she looked abruptly over his shoulder to see a porch swing at the end of the veranda rocking pleasantly with the breeze, and it looked so appealing in its simplicity and quiet. She walked in the direction of the inviting bench and sat down, letting her feet swing delightfully back and forth as they dangled above the weathered floorboards; when Richard joined her she rested her head on his shoulder and tried to still her restless movements with little success.

"If this is the cure for anxiety," she said as her heart continued to race, "then I know why the sanitariums are so full."

"The gin?" he asked.

"Not that," she shook her head in reply. "Ella had this powder, a nerve tonic to keep you dancing."

Richard paused for a moment. "Oh," he said, drawing the word out into a chuckle of realization, "cocaine?" She nodded. "Thank god. I thought for a minute you were cracking up on me."

"Can't both be true?" She asked, her eyes alternating from intense fixation on one thing to searching frantically for the next on the blackened horizon.

His arm was around her shoulder and he stroked his fingers down her arm in a comforting caress. "Let me guess: Dr. Tejay."

Her newspaperman did not miss much. She nodded again. "It makes everything very… intense." She pulled the red tin from the pocket of her coral suit ensemble, where it had been safely tucked it away. "And, according to the girls, fun. Apparently." Though she was not so sure. "Would you like some?"

"After your ringing endorsement?" he asked with a skeptical grin. Mary realized she was chewing on her fingernails, a habit she thought she had kicked many years before after her mother told her it made her look unsure of herself. "Thanks," Richard said in refusal, "but it never really agreed with me."

"You've heard of it then?" she asked, halfway through the question chastising herself for putting her sheltered life on display.

"It's popular in the newspaper business. My night editor swears by it, he says it keeps him up and writing copy until dawn. I've tried it occasionally but found that, while the quantity of my work improved, the quality dropped off significantly."

Mary laughed, an edgy laugh she could not regulate. "Did it make you nervous?"

"No," he shook his head, "I would feel… utterly infallible, free to do anything I wanted." She was going to joke that this was not very different than normal, before she thought how curious it was that they both found the freedom the substance offered worrying, in different ways. "That's dangerous," he continued. "When you think you can do no wrong is exactly when you do."

"I don't think I'm suited to it," she commented wryly. "I keep thinking that I'm doing _everything_ wrong. Though maybe I just don't equate freedom with loss of control."

"You'll feel better in about twenty minutes," Richard said, "just about the time Louise and Ella will want another dose."

"No thank you!" she laughed again, "I'm far too jittery as it is." Her intense gaze fixed back on her husband; he looked relaxed in a way she envied at that particular moment. The nervous energy was still there and she wanted to wring her hands or tap her foot or _do _something. But at least some of her self-consciousness had subsided, alone with him in this darkened corner.

No, she did not like this particular medicine, she concluded. Though if Ella's mother took it for many years, it may well confirm the rumors about the woman's erratic behavior. "I don't know," she said, still clutching the box, "if it's better to be with someone calm and collected in this strange anxiety, or with someone equally irrational," she hinted. Richard's composed demeanor, which should be a comfort, was only agitating her further – while she wanted the drug's effects to end, in the meantime, she wanted someone to share the experience with so she did not feel quite so alone. If she was going to lose control, she figured, better to bring someone along with her.

He really did not miss much, she thought again as he took the box gently from her hand and pinched some powder on to the base of his thumb. Richard sniffed it then licked his fingers; he _had_ done this before. "Happy now?" he asked as Mary watched him lay his head back against the bench, entranced by the roll of his throat.

She took the red box and heaved it out into the darkness, content to not encounter the white powdery substance for quite some time. "Better," she replied, moving up to kiss him, and they spent most of the next hour channeling the chemical vivacity into a petting party of their own.


	3. Barneymugging

**3. 'Barneymugging'  
**

_Barneymugging, verb: 1. Contraction of terms for 'scandal' and 'kissing,' 2. Lovemaking._

"Half of Newport is here," Ella commented, looking between the busy tables to some of the more active social climbers, flitting from group to group like hummingbirds extracting a taste of nectar before buzzing off to the next flower. The small bar had filled up even further with people as the night wore on, and the population had become considerably more diverse. "Is that Jean Edmunton?" she asked in disbelief.

"Holy cow," Louise muttered, mouth open, "get a load of those rocks."

"How did a plain jane turn into a showcase like that?" Reggie asked, and they unsubtly stared at the woman with the dirty blonde hair and the pounds of jewelry.

They had all been content to sit out the last few dances, the girls feeling rather down after the chemical high had faded. So they stayed at the table and gossiped about people they saw. The people-watching _was_ highly amusing, rivaled only by some of the characters Mary and Richard had observed during their two weeks in New York. But now everyone was starting to finally perk up again – Mary thought this was aided by another trip to the washroom for Ella and Louise– and she herself would have felt almost completely back to normal by that point, if it weren't for the gimlets the waiter kept bringing.

"They can't be real," Mary said, watching the sparkle of an emerald next to a diamond in the woman's necklace. "In a place like this?"

"Don't be so sure…" Louise said disparagingly from across the table. "It would be just like her to rub our noses in it. She used to be this demure little thing; no guts. And just look at her now! Through some miracle she married this Cuban sugar baron who's really got the sugar, if you know what I mean."

"Money," Ella helpfully translated.

"And if you're wondering why half of Newport is here, Ella dear," she said, turning her attention back to the girl in all black, "it is probably because you told them to come."

"I did no such thing."

"You wrote in _City Life_ that the most happening place in Newport this summer is actually a roadhouse off a highway in Connecticut. What did you think would happen?"

"I never said _which_ highway in Connecticut," she said defensively.

"I think they figured it out, considering there's only one road to town." The brunette widened her eyes to highlight the obviousness of it all, in an expression that for the briefest moment reminded Mary of her mother. "And now our hidden place is ruined, and it's all your fault." Louise watched with unconcealed aversion as Jean Edmunton accepted a polite request to dance from a doddering elderly gentleman and they moved to the center of the room in an old-fashioned step. "Ruined!"

"_City Life_?" Richard asked, offering Ella a way out of the conversation of blame, "that's a Hearst publication, isn't it?"

"Yes," she replied, seizing the topic gratefully. "I write a nightlife column for them. Nothing much but it pays the bills."

Richard regarded her for a moment. "Stilts," he said knowingly, pointing a finger in her direction.

"That's me!" she exclaimed, her sweet smile beaming at her minor celebrity. "I don't know why I use a pseudonym," she confided, "everyone knows I write it."

"Sometimes thinking you can hide behind a penname is more important than whether people believe you or not," he posited. "I find you can write more daringly if you pretend you are writing anonymously."

"That, and if Father ever found out he would stop the hush money or have a heart attack," she joked. "Or both!"

"And do you let_ them_ read what you write?" Mary asked, indicating Reggie and Louise.

"Let us?" Reggie asked incredulously. "Seeing as we're practically her main characters, she can't really stop us, can she?"

"One would think," Mary commented pointedly in Richard's direction.

"You can read them when we get home!" he replied in an aggravated tone that indicated he was repeating himself.

"Richard is turning our honeymoon into a column for his newspaper," she explained to the group, "and he won't let me read a word of it."

"Until we get back," he amended.

"Once it's too late to censor you?"

"Once it's too late to censor myself, based on your reaction."

"Oh, applesauce," Mary said glibly, seizing on one of Reggie's trivializing terms. "You just don't want me to discover all of our secrets that you are revealing to the British public. But I've made it my mission to find out."

"You're not the only one with objections. My office did forward me a rather amusing complaint letter about the column, suggesting it was unsporting of me to turn our honeymoon into a spectacle."

"I imagine you receive quite a few letters to that effect."

"The peculiar thing was," Richard continued, "that it was signed by one 'Violet C.,' from Yorkshire." At this both Mary and Louise burst out laughing, to the puzzlement of the others at the table unfamiliar with the withering criticism the Dowager Countess was apt to dispense. "I wrote her back and offered to cancel her complimentary subscription if she truly objected…"

"You can hardly expect Granny to keep clippings for her scrapbook," Mary replied when she caught her breath. "Especially if you plan to write about crumbling Connecticut roadhouses and gin…" she added, fishing for a clue as to this week's topic.

"I'll never tell," he replied, catching her in the act with one of his most charming smiles.

"You couldn't possibly!" Louise said with worried eyes. "Ella's already told the whole East Coast, and now you'll let England know about our little spot too? You must promise," she insisted.

"I solemnly swear," he replied with a journalist's practiced deflection, "that there will be no British invasion of this roadhouse." And Mary smiled to herself that she did have a clue what he was going to write, and that it most certainly _would_ include the shabby inn they currently occupied.

"Such moralists, all the sudden," Ella said to Louise and Reggie, coming to her own defense about spilling the beans, "you two don't mind when I write all about your antics. You just don't want me to tell people _where_ they occur!"

"We deserve to have our antics written about," Reggie proclaimed, his phony accent less pronounced after a few drinks, "I always felt my personality should be committed to posterity."

"Oh you ought to be committed, alright," the vamp replied.

"Besides, what fun would it be if everyone were able to know about our haunts? We don't want any publicity-seekers crashing our good time."

"Yes, you don't want any competition in that area," Ella replied in one of her better retorts of the night.

"Does it affect your actions," Richard interjected to Louise, curious, "knowing your adventures are being recorded for posterity for all of New York to read?"

"Hardly," Louise replied with a huff, "I'm not going to repress my instincts just because half the city will read about it the next morning."

"I meant the other way around," he clarified with a laugh. "That if someone is bothering to write about you, you better give them a good story?" Reggie nodded briskly in humorous confirmation, but Louise pondered the question; the idea had clearly not occurred to her before.

She paused for a long moment. "I think I want to give myself a good story," she concluded finally, with great seriousness. The brunette indicated their surroundings, the beautifully-dressed Newport characters mixing with the local population in work clothes, the giggling and shaking of heads in mock horror and the come hither smiles and the playful pats on the back, the dancing and the trails of smoke from cigarettes and the liquor sloshed on the floor. "After all, that's what all of this is, isn't it?"

* * *

"That's the problem!" Ella cried several drinks later, slamming her empty glass upside down on the dirty table. "What _do_ you wear for motoring excursions? I mean look at us, we're all in day clothes! _In the evening!_"

"_Vogue_ says coral is an especially good choice," Mary replied, numerous empty glasses in front of her too. "And lavender is _not_." She underlined the word with an emphatic shake of her head.

"Then you and I are right in style," said Louise, indicating her pink dress and Mary's coral ensemble. "Ella, you've got no excuse, with your black on black on black."

"Not true," the pale woman objected with a thrust of her chin, "In black, I am always prepared."

"As I am, dear, though I don't mean clothing," Louise said with a giggle, glancing across to the men at the table. Reggie and Richard, bored of the lengthy talk of fashion, had been huddled together talking about something or other – phrases like 'transportation sector' and 'public offering' occasionally wandered over – and continued their discussion.

Mary knew what Louise was talking about, though she was surprised that these two single women did. "You mean, you…?" she asked, not quite speaking it aloud.

"Obviously!" Louise exclaimed. "Why do you think we're here?"

Ella interjected at Mary's puzzled expression: "This is the best place for barneymugging between here and Newport. You think Louise can carry on with Reggie like that at the Aunt and Uncle Fire Extinguisher's house? Everyone stops here for some fun before a month with the uptight relatives."

"Goodness," she said, the liquor making it difficult to adopt her usual air of sophistication. "That explains why it is difficult to get a room." She glanced over to find Ella trying to contain a titter at her naiveté.

"I wish I was married like you though," Louise sighed. "In spite of my fear of the m-word. It would be so_ liberating_."

Mary almost choked on her sip of gin. "Liberating?"

"Absolutely! The folks get off your back, you can do whatever you want. Everyone shuts up about all that morality jazz and you can be on your way!" Mary had to admit that she had never thought of it like that. "I already know who I would take as my first post-nuptial lover," Louise continued matter-of-factly.

"Who?" Ella enquired.

"Nick Cooper."

"Ooh, good choice. He's a bit of a potato, but I wouldn't say no to mugging with him…"

"You mean you _haven't_ said no to mugging with him," Louise interrupted.

"Well yes," the girl confessed with a sideways glance. "But I'll take him again when you're done if you don't mind."

"Potato?" Mary asked.

"A young man shy of brains," Louise explained. "Though that doesn't mean shy in other areas."

These women were as compulsive about their boyfriends as Mary's fellow debutants had been about finding husbands, she realized, though she did wonder to what degree they were exaggerating. Not much, she learned, as Ella leaned over to whisper in her ear a detailed description of Mr. Cooper's most distinguishing physical feature.

"Why wait?" Ella asked Louise when she was finished.

"He's married," the brunette replied with a flippant sweep of her hand. "You may not believe in equality, but I do: if I'm going to be the other woman, then he darn well better be the other man."

"And what if your husband objects to you taking a lover?" Mary asked of this Louise's theoretical marriage.

"I'll let him take his own, of course! Who cares, as long as we're even?"

Mary glanced over to her own husband, quite certain he would not agree with this particular leveling of the playing field. "Our worlds are very different," was the only comment she could muster.

"Don't be a killjoy, cousin Mary! When I get married, I'll let you borrow mine if I can borrow yours," Louise said, biting her lower lip in a gesture expressing her appetite, and it was Mary's turn to object to the idea of sharing. Over her dead body, she thought to herself, believing this girl utterly unworthy of her newspaperman. Fortunately she was about one drink shy of saying this out loud.

"'Bank's closed,' I believe would be the phrase in your vernacular," she replied instead, her gaze momentarily steady despite the copious amounts of liquor coursing through her system.

Richard, oblivious to the rest of their conversation, nevertheless perked up at the word 'bank.' "Has the fashion talk finally ceased?" he asked her side of the table.

"Oh yes," Mary said, catching his eye, "and I'm about to expire with it." The endless heat and drink and dancing had finally gotten the better of her, the artificial energy borrowed from the many gimlets and other substances she had imbibed finally reaching its inevitable crash.

"In that case we'll say goodnight," Richard said, rising.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly go to bed now," Ella said, also rising to pull Reggie onto the dance floor. He and Richard shook hands as he passed, and Ella gave a little wave as she spun off into the thinning crowd.

"I can't believe you're giving me the air," Louise pouted across the table as Mary stood up rather precariously.

"And it's only four a.m." the older girl commiserated facetiously.

* * *

Mary plopped inelegantly down on the iron-posted bed with a yawn, her fingers skimming the stitching on the homey quilt she knew it was too hot to utilize that evening. "Is it wrong to hope Bif takes his time with the Isotta?" she asked, staring up at the dirty-beige ceiling that seemed to twirl before her very eyes. "I am in no shape for Newport tomorrow."

"You mean today," Richard said as he propped an arm across her stretched-out form, his lips brushing over hers.

"That too," she murmured against his mouth, her hand grasping the back of his neck to hold him to her. Not that he was trying to pull back.

A trail of clothes led from the door of the small room to the bed they currently occupied, discarded not so much in passion but exhaustion and carelessness. Despite the breeze crossing between the two windows at the corner, the room was stiflingly hot for such an early hour of the morning, and as soon as she had secured the door closed, Mary had an acute need to shed her outer garments when she felt the alcohol prickle up as perspiration on her skin. Actually it had been almost all she could do to make it up the stairs to the third floor and then across the room to the bed, and she resolved that gin could possibly be the death of her.

Richard wasn't much better off, she realized as he rolled over beside her onto his back and rubbed his eyes. "How many did you have?" she asked, her limbs suddenly so heavy.

"I lost count, though the bill Reggie conspicuously left to me will probably illuminate that information. And you?"

"Too many," she sighed, wanting to embrace him but not quite able to turn over. "They just kept arriving. Were you ordering them?" He shook his head. "I don't think anyone was, the waiter just kept coming back with more," she said in a dazed, faraway voice. "And the rest all seem rather more adept than I at the sport of inebriation…"

"I gather they've had a lot of experience," he commented, his voice rough from shouting over the jazz band all evening.

"They have a lot of experience in a lot of areas," she said, thinking again how different their conduct was compared to what English society permitted, at least before the war.

Richard reached to turn off the bedside lamp, and they were enveloped in a lovely darkness that Mary found so seductive. "You mean the fact that they all use this place for one last rendezvous before heading off to grandmother's house?"

"Always the investigative journalist," she mused, her breaths coming in deeper, slower pants in rhythm to the chirping of the crickets outside.

"Don't knock it," he said, his eyes closed, "it serves me well."

"You could have a field day here."

"Not very useful information, unfortunately – none of these people have any power; I doubt anyone would care very much about their exploits. They're rather like children playing at being wild."

"I wasn't sure if they were young pretending to be wild, or wild pretending to be young…" she trailed off, the stillness and quiet of the room starting to overwhelm her already fragile consciousness. She finally found the energy to roll on her stomach, throwing her arm over Richard's bare chest and resting her head on his shoulder.

His arm came around her to toy idly with the thin strap of her slip, though she could tell the gesture was more for its own purpose than because he wanted to rip it off her immediately. "Probably a bit of both."

"I almost feel old-fashioned by comparison," she mumbled as she slipped deeper into a half sleep. "Do you think we're letting the roadhouse down? From what I gather, this place was built for the sole purpose of barneymugging."

"Of _what_?"

"Their word for lovemaking," she said by way of explanation, too tired to go into the etymology of the term.

"How wretched." Richard replied.

"You'll thank me for translating when you decide to write an entire column on the vocabulary of the young."

His chuckle echoed in the room pleasantly. "If you have to refer to sex in euphemisms, then you're not doing it right."

"You gotta get with the lingo, kid," Mary murmured as she drifted off, sleep finally claiming her.

* * *

She awoke in midday heat to a slight throbbing in the back of her head and the feel of cotton wool in her mouth. Her legs ached, either from the four mile walk down the highway, or the dancing, or other early-morning activities. They were much in the same position they had collapsed in earlier, with Mary on her back while Richard lay beside her on his stomach, his arm thrown over her possessively. It was not how they had fallen asleep at four a.m. – no, that respite had been interrupted.

Mary had opened her eyes with a flash earlier; she did not know when, exactly, but the dawn light pouring in through the cheap net curtains told her it was the early start to a fresh day. The temperature had dropped sharply in the couple of hours she had been asleep, and the breeze that crossed the room could almost be described as pleasant. She had gotten up for a glass of water and returned to bed content to observe the stillness of the morning, idle in that wonderful twilight between being far too drunk and the inevitable hangover; that hour when everything was static and white noise and empty.

Richard seemed slightly beyond that stage as she caught him moving out of the corner of her eye; her own movements must have woken him. A large hand came up to shield his face from the sunlight and he groaned; she caught the words "demon rum" muttered from his lips.

"We were drinking gin," she reminded him gently, her state of perfect balance with the universe making her feel compassionate to all living creatures.

"Right," he said hoarsely. "Was it fun?"

Mary leaned down over him to kiss his earlobe. "The frog's eyebrows."

"The duck's quack," he murmured in response when she moved to kiss his temple, avoiding his lips for the moment.

"The kitten's ankles," she said as she kissed his cheekbone.

"The cat's pajamas," he said as she kissed the corner of his mouth and he turned to catch her lips fully.

"The goat's whiskers," she said as she shied away with a giggle and kissed his jaw instead.

"The bee's knees." Mary had been wondering how long he would put up with her evasion tactics, and as Richard uttered the last colloquialism, he fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her down to kiss him properly.

She raked her nails down his arm as his tongue invaded her mouth, her teasing having inflamed both their passions despite his hangover. He used his free hand to brush the straps of her pale pink slip down over her shoulders, and Mary tried to wriggle out of it with a bit of difficulty as he would not let her break the kiss, though judging from the low moan against her mouth he did not mind her twisting efforts to undress. Finally managing to shed the garment, she went to work on his shorts, wanting to feel the entirety of his bare skin against hers as his hand stroked over her backside and crept between her legs.

Richard, one hand still clenched in her hair, turned her head to the side and began to kiss down her neck, and she realized he was intent on teasing her as she had teased him. The magic of his fingers, utterly captivating as it was, never quite got to exactly where she desperately wanted it, nor did his lips return to hers anytime soon, so Mary had to content herself with kissing his collarbone as her fingers traced light patterns down his body and she tried to contain the moans his skilled hand was eliciting.

Her breath came in heavier pants as she writhed against him, his ministrations arousing an almost unbearable need. "Please," she whispered, nipping at the sensitive skin at the hollow of his throat with her teeth in an effort to coax him into giving her what she wanted, "Richard." Of course he relented after her plea and his fingers moved the merest centimeter lower and sped up; she couldn't help but move with him as she twisted the sheets within her reach in ever-increasing knots until she came apart and shuddered against him, his name still on her lips.

The hand that was still warped in her hair released her and moved lower to stroke her back, and Mary closed her eyes and kissed his chest as she tried to steady her breathing, her fingers running over the sculpted lines of his torso in a fascinated haze until her heartbeat returned to normal. When she finally came back to earth, she tilted her chin up to kiss his lips, and Richard moved to turn them over so he was on top but she stopped him with a hand pressed to his chest and a shake of her head. He laughed low in his throat and gestured in a shrug, his grin telling her to do as she pleased.

Mary kissed down his chest as she moved to straddle his hips, positioning herself over his arousal. Richard was watching her intently as she threw her other leg to the outside of his hip, and in response to his gaze she bit her lip in an imitation of Louise's look of desire as she imagined the blissful fullness she was about to feel, that completion she had been craving all night as they had danced and petted. "My darling," he cautioned with a squeeze to her hip and she paused, sighing deeply in impatience.

"Right," she replied, leaning over to reach for her cosmetic bag on the nightstand. She pulled out a tin and handed it to her husband. Like her flapper friends, she was always prepared, though she had not been fortunate enough to learn of such things until after she was married. Well, maybe a few weeks before, she thought, recalling their exploits in the servants' quarters of Haxby in the time leading up to their wedding with a blush.

Thank goodness for liberation, she found herself thinking as he slipped on the condom. They had decided early on that neither wanted children any time soon, Mary uncertain she had any maternal instinct whatsoever and Richard declaring he wanted her all to himself for the foreseeable future; just one more instance when their mutual interests aligned so perfectly.

They always aligned so perfectly, she realized as she again hovered above him, slowly lowering down as his fingers dug into her hips. She heard his groan, though she didn't see his expression as her head was thrown back in pleasure by the time he was fully inside her. The static of her state of mind and the jumping of her nerve endings in response to their coupling was a potent combination, far headier than anything they had consumed that evening, and she had to wait a moment to absorb the disorder – for the first time that night, despite whatever had occurred, she felt truly in the moment. Then Richard called her name gruffly and she started to move, setting a slow, indulgent rhythm that seemed appropriate to this tranquil dawn.

They kept this decadent pace as long as either could stand, the slightest movement eliciting a deep twinge, the smallest caress a dramatic shudder, in what seemed like an eternity of tender passion. But eventually Richard tightened his grip on her hips and began to guide her movements, not so much urging her to speed up as demanding it. Mary had no objection to complying, bracing on his shoulders for leverage, and he moved to cup one of her breasts in his palm, tweaking his thumb over the peak. She whimpered in response, either to his attentions or the friction building between them, and at the sound she saw his control snap. Abruptly he rolled them over without breaking their connection, and Mary found herself on her back as he pounded her unremittingly into the mattress. She weaved her fingers through his hair and pulled him down to kiss her, sensing the approach of another peak and wanting to feel as much of him as she could. Crumbling beneath him, she screamed against his mouth without the slightest thought to the neighbors at such an early hour as he joined her in ecstasy.


	4. Clothesline

**4. 'Clothesline'**

_Clothesline, noun: 1. One who tells neighborhood gossip, 2. A weaver of tales_

Many hours later, the chilled morning breeze had turned into an East Coast midday heat, replete with humidity, and the room was once again stifling. Mary could almost believe their tryst in the cool dawn had been a dream, if it weren't for her recollections in the minutest detail. She pondered this as she reached for more water, the hangover that had eluded her earlier finally, spitefully present.

Mary tried to sit up without waking her partner, but it was rather difficult with his arm weighing across her waist. It was even more difficult when that arm tightened around her as Richard opened his eyes, rather intent on keeping her where she was at his side. She started to roll her eyes in response until she realized the gesture was actually painful when combined with her ringing headache. "Gin is a very bad thing," she commented hoarsely.

"Funny," he replied with a leer, "I feel fine."

"I felt fine earlier," she said enviously, "but the effects of the liquor have made a viscous return."

"Serves you right for tormenting me when I was feeling less than alert."

"I didn't hear you complain too vigorously," Mary stated in as provocative a tone as she could muster. "I'm sure the flapper children are out dancing rings in the garden, as fresh as a spring morning."

He chuckled. "Only because they weren't up at dawn indulging in another kind of dancing."

She quirked an eyebrow, their banter waking her up as a strong coffee might and enjoying catching him in an error: "I thought you said euphemisms were the refuge of the inexperienced."

"True," he conceded. "Let me correct myself: your friends passed the evening… what did you call it? 'Barneymugging,' or something equally horrific. _We_ spent the night fucking each other into oblivion."

"Now that's something for your column. Though I still think the 'oblivion' part is more attributable to the gin."

"Do you?" he asked, nibbling on her ear.

"Well, at least partially," she acknowledged. "I won't say that was the most I have ever had to drink in one sitting, but it certainly ranks high on the list."

"Mm, do tell, Lady Mary," he mumbled against her cheek, always on the lookout for a good story. "I wasn't aware girls of your background were allowed to have a misspent youth."

"Just a misspent marriage," she replied, "seeing as you're intent on corrupting me. One instance was the night after our wedding, if you'll remember."

"Oh yes…" Richard laughed at the recollection. They had been married less than a day, and were holed up in the few partially-furnished rooms of Haxby, when they decided to raid the dusty racks of Mr. Russell's hidden wine cellar. There were some rather good vintages indeed, though by the second bottle Mary did not care about the year or the origin point in France, and she selected the third bottle based solely on the way the charming label design featuring a crenelated medieval tower topped by a lion made her mind wander to an age when knights wore metal armor instead of clacking on metal typewriter keys. Her laugher at picturing Richard in such an outfit led to them conduct a search of the attic for leftover Russell family relics, and though they found no metal suits to fit his title, they did discovered a pair of rusty old swords that led to a disgracefully shoddy fencing match amidst the cobwebs that nearly knocked over the precious bottle of 1865 Chateau Latour.

"But no," she said, "that doesn't take the prize either. The very worst was ages ago…" she drifted off, her mind still fuzzy. "We were in Venice," she explained, "I was fifteen, and the Bartles were taking their daughter on a trip there to celebrate her debut – she was a bit older – and Margaret invited me along. I readily accepted, very pleased with the chance to travel, and even more pleased because my governess would stay behind with Sybil and Edith, and Margaret was too old to need one."

"I think I can see where this is going," Richard chuckled as he nuzzled her neck, and for a moment the incongruity of the situation and her story was almost too much – here she was, lying naked in bed with her shady newspaperman well after noon, hungover from a night of drinking, amongst other things, telling tales of innocent youthful rebellion. She brought his face up to hers to kiss him, wondering what her younger self would have thought of this strange and stimulating future.

"Oh yes the stars aligned," she said dryly, returning to her story as Richard returned to trailing kisses down her shoulder, "because one night the Bartles were invited to attend a ball, one of those licentious Venetian affairs with masks and costumes that went all night long and was utterly unsuitable for us. So they left us in the hotel with Margaret's maid to supervise, under the clear understanding that we would stay in our room with a quiet dinner and come up with an itinerary for the next day."

"Which you obviously did," he murmured against her collarbone.

"Obviously," Mary echoed. "We were already changing into evening clothes as we watched them board their boat from the window, and were downstairs by the time they were around the bend," she laughed.

"What an irresponsible chaperone," he commented sarcastically, "letting you out on your own."

"Oh Bernice borrowed one of Margaret's gowns and came along! Her maid was quite a resource – not very much older than we were, but with so much more… _life experience_. I don't think we would have gone if she hadn't egged us on," she theorized as Richard's hand found one of her breasts and his thumb began to tease the nipple into a hard peak. "Margaret had read that all the fun took place on the Lido, so all three of us boarded the public ferry amongst the workers and the common people and went out there, _unaccompanied_." Mary paused to let the scandalous picture sink in, though Richard seemed more amused than impressed by the tremendous daring such an action required. She covered his hand with her own and moved it down to rest on her waist, feeling he was not paying proper attention to her story and determined to not be distracted.

"After Venice, the Lido was wonderful," she continued, propping up on one elbow to fluff the pillows behind her and trying to contain her amusement at his scowling expression. "We went from ancient gas lamps to an electric carnival in the span of a boat ride. There were all these dazzling lights, and all these people, so much life and movement, a world away from what we were used to. And there were dance halls, and little kiosks selling these drinks called 'spritz,' this bitter kind of fizzy wine. So we got swept up in the crowd moving down the street towards the beach, stopping here for a dance or there for a spritz, and repeating again all the way up to the water. And I danced with some of the most unsavory people. It was terribly common, and utterly marvelous." She recalled the joyful atmosphere, the taste of the ice cream she had eaten as they watched the throngs of people moving along the main street, the feeling of liberation she had felt for the first time in her life. It all felt so gloriously present as she thought about that time long ago, though maybe a small part that atmosphere was present here in this dusty roadhouse.

"I gather that was your first time being drunk?"

"Oh yes, and I vowed the next morning, the last." They shared a knowing look before Mary fell back against the pillows with a laugh that made her head hurt, wishing she had taken her own advice from so many years before. "So we made it to the beach at the end of the street, and it was dark and fairly deserted, and I was dizzy already, so we collapsed in one of the little tents with yet another spritz, watching the waves and listening to the music. I almost think that was more fun than even the dancing – being near the fun but not in the center of it, a quiet moment amongst the revelry. Do you know what I mean?"

He nodded, his hand pressing deeper against her waist in reassuring assent. "I always preferred the sidelines."

"But Margaret was determined to squeeze as much out of this as she could, so pretty soon we were back on the other side of the street and continuing the pattern of drink, then dance, then drink," she laughed. "It seemed to go on forever, but I think of it now and it couldn't have been much more than an hour or two. It wasn't very late and we were back at the hotel with plenty of time to spare, but at the moment it felt like infinity was stretching before us and we were on the cusp of an entirely new era."

"Maybe you were," Richard said.

"Yes, I suppose that's true. Though I remember the boat ride back was dreadful. We were the only ones on the ferry; no one else would leave the color and life of the Lido to go back to the grim old city at that hour. The worst part was that I knew the bright illuminations were behind me and the flickering gas lamps were ahead – it was like returning to a medieval castle after an evening on The Strand, and I woke up the next morning thinking I would never know that bright electric world again."

Mary pondered this for a second, and suddenly thought, of all people, about Patrick. If her life had gone as she initially planned, if she had married the heir, perhaps her prediction would have been correct, and at that very moment she would be ensconced in the gothic splendor of Downton instead of the electric carnival of this creaky Victorian inn. "I don't know what's worse," she mused, "to know a taste of a life you won't have, or to have no idea what you're missing."

"Do you miss it now?" Richard asked.

"No!" she said, laughing at her own theatrical reaction to a night of freedom. "I wouldn't have even wanted a common life on the Lido, a carnival every night. But at the time it made me terribly sad that I would not even have the option to decide."

"I find it hard to believe," Richard said, "that a girl with the wherewithal to escape Venice for the Lido at fifteen would ever feel her options were limited."

"Well I agree with you now," she smiled, "but it's a world of jazz and gin, and then it was Strauss and scones. What about you?" she asked, very content to lie in bed exchanging stories with her husband rather than face the glaring light of day. It was a great luxury, this time spent moored to the roadside inn and unable to continue their journey – with no one to see and nothing to do, they could fritter the day away. And she had to admit, she was as curious about his life before her as he was about her life before him; their histories were so far apart they were both like foreigners in a new territory. "I imagine nights of drinking are part and parcel of the newspaper business, but tell me the worst."

"I would happily tell you the worst if I could remember it," Richard joked, before pausing to think it over. "Actually," he began, "I remember it far too clearly." He sat up and pulled her toward him, so her head rested on his shoulder and her leg snaked around his. "It was the night of my thirtieth birthday…" he began with the flourish of someone who told stories for a living.

"…and you were celebrating," she interrupted.

"No," he corrected, "I was miserable,"

"The transition from being a 'hopper' to a 'face stretcher' too much to take?" He looked at her with the same quizzical gaze she must have given her flapper friends the night before in response to the strange vocabulary. "Thirty is apparently a great dividing line in this culture," she noted helpfully.

"In many cultures probably, though the terminology here is a bit different."

"So," she said, returning to the topic, "you were thirty and miserable."

"Abjectly so. You see, I had set myself the goal of becoming a millionaire by age thirty. And I was nowhere near to achieving it."

"But Richard Carlisle doesn't fail," Mary protested.

"I did then," he said with a firm nod. "Rather spectacularly, if I do say so myself. The foundations were all there, the plan was in place, but things were simply not going as I had envisioned. I was owner and editor of a failing newspaper in Edinburgh, deep in debt, with the cash reserves to keep it going another month, tops."

"You couldn't turn the paper around?"

"I _had_ turned the paper around. Over two years I had taken a dismal, conservative newspaper and made it readable and daring, staffed it with good writers and filled it with interesting news items. And readership continued to fall, and advertising with it."

"What was the problem?" she asked, knowing he still employed such a strategy with new acquisitions.

"No one wanted to read it," he continued, "or be seen reading it. The paper had such a dismal reputation when I bought it that no amount of revitalization could convince people otherwise. I had not realized that appearances were at least as important as content, and no matter what I filled the pages with, the _Courier-Times_ would always _appear_ old-fashioned. But I was just starting to understand that at the time."

"What did you do?" Mary enquired, strangely eager for all to resolve itself. Obviously things had worked out, but imagining Richard as a struggling entrepreneur, celebrating his birthday by fighting off disappointment and debt collectors, made her anxious all the same.

"I took the last of the operating money, called a staff meeting at the local pub, told them the paper was folding and got magnificently, stupendously drunk, alongside everyone else. I figured I could either let the thing limp to the finish line in a few weeks' time or end it there and then with a bang. And if there ever was a time for a scorched-earth, ruinous finale, it was then."

She could not help but laugh at the image of an utterly plastered Richard, in a dreary pub surrounded by his staff, throwing the last of his cash in the bartender's direction while scotch and whiskey flowed like water around them.

"So glad my anguish amuses you," he said wryly.

Putting a hand to her mouth to hide her smile, she replied, "I'm only laughing because it is so… in character. You always turn things to your advantage, and in this case you turned a failure into a spectacle."

He returned her hidden smile with a grin of his own, his eyes telling of memories that defied description. "And it was a spectacle – the managing editor passed out on top of the bar, using the sports editor as a pillow, and the political correspondent stood on a table to announce his intention to run for parliament as chairman of the 'Bugger All' party. I daresay it was the start of the Independent Labour Party coalition," he added drolly. "I, somehow, managed to stagger home, and slept for about twenty-four hours straight."

"Did you wake up with a monumental hangover like I have now?"

He shook his head. "I woke up with the clearest head I'd had in a long while," Richard replied. "Shutting down the paper was the best thing I could have done. I could have continued my efforts to keep it open, raising bits of money here and there and struggling on, for Lord knows how long with nothing to show for it. But irrevocably closing it down, spending all the money left so there was no hope of continuing: that was the solution."

"The solution was a drinking binge?" Mary asked skeptically.

"I forced myself into a corner with only one solution, and it turned out to be the right one. The building the paper was housed in had appreciated in value, so I sold that with enough to pay the bank and make a small profit. I used the money to move all the equipment to a cheaper space outside the city, reconvened the staff and founded my own paper from scratch. Being quite good, like _The Courier_ had been but no one appreciated, the new paper was almost immediately a success."

"A millionaire by forty…" she said.

"Many times over by then."

Mary wondered if Louise and her friends would have similar success. While Richard's drunken revelry had been to some sort of purpose as well as celebration, her cousin's set did not seem to have any of the ambition to achieve more. They were simply pleasure-seekers who aspired to glamour, more like Mary's English aristocrats than the entrepreneurial Americans she expected to encounter in this country.

"What does Reggie do for a living?" she asked, realizing the topic had not come up in her conversation with him the night before.

"He's a junior bonds trader. I don't think he's very good at it though…" Richard trailed off. "I asked him about Federal Highway bonds and all he told me was that it is illegal to transport women across state lines for immoral purposes."

"Not very useful investment advice," Mary commented. "Though perhaps you may find that knowledge useful in the future. Speaking of immoral purposes…" Slowly she dropped the sheet she had been hugging against her chest to reveal her bare breasts in invitation, hoping her disheveled hair and cloudy eyes were not too unattractive in the glare of the sunlight.

Richard looked at the picture before him covetously, and she gathered her unkempt appearance would not put him off. "You were my hangover cure; now I get to be yours?"

Raising her eyebrows pointedly in response, she cupped his face and pulled him towards her. Their lips met and she pushed her tongue into his mouth, dancing with his and feeling immeasurably better in his arms. He trailed his hand from her waist down lower, as she twined her fingers in his hair. And then they were rudely interrupted by a loud knock on the door.

"Mary! Cousin Mary!" cried a voice from the other side.

Richard grunted with annoyance and Mary could not help but smirk; perhaps his anguish really _did_ amuse her after all. "Just a minute," she called out and he frowned at her deeply in rebuke. Getting up, she ignored him as she pulled on her robe at the side of the bed and walked to the door. She opened it a fraction to find her distant cousin, bright and smiling in a yellow ensemble. "Good morning, Louise."

"Morning?" the other girl chastised. "It's two o'clock! And I refuse to let you act like old fogies and sleep the day away." Mary had to suppress a raised eyebrow at the word 'sleep;' judging from the rumble of laughter behind her, Richard was not so courteous. "There's a scenic sea port about twenty miles away," Louise continued, "with shopping, so we're driving down to explore. See you downstairs in _ten minutes_." She spun on her heel and bounded down the stairs, not waiting for a response. She really did remind Mary of Sybil sometimes.

"The touring company demands our presence," Mary said as she picked up her cosmetic bag from the nightstand and headed towards the bathroom.

"Now you're feeling miraculously refreshed?" he called out after her.

"Maybe your hangover cure worked too well."


	5. Brooksy

**AN: Oops, I totally forgot to add an author's note to this when I published this chapter. What a dumbdora, as Louise would say! **

**Tremendous thanks to everyone as usual for both reading and reviewing. I almost fainted when I saw that my little one-shot outtake had expanded to 20,000 words. But that's what happens when you have such wonderful Richard/Mary fans as readers – you all make it such fun to write!**

**This may be the end of their roadhouse adventure, but it is not the end of their trip. I already have a Newport outtake brewing, so when I return from my own vacation we may pick up a few weeks later on the honeymoon. Until then, make yourself a gimlet and put some Duke Ellington on the phonograph ****–** you know that's what Mary and Richard would do.  


* * *

**5. 'Brooksy'**

_Brooksy, noun: 1. A classy dresser, 2. A flapper who takes risks_

Mary met her friends downstairs, explaining that Richard was staying in to write his next column for his deadline that evening. But the chorus of shocked noises and open mouths from the hodgepodge group had nothing to do with her husband's absence. As she descended the creaky wooden stairs at the front of the inn, each of the three looked at her with the same surprise they would greet her with if she had arrived in an 18th century ball gown, or a Japanese kabuki robe, or a toga. For a moment, Mary was even more uncertain than she had been – if her young and fashionable friends were shocked by the Chanel women's trousers that she had picked up on a whim in New York, then what would the people who were _not_ young and fashionable say?

For a second she wanted to tell them the truth, that Richard's deadline was actually two days later, and drag him out with her for moral support and perhaps physical protection from the riot she was sure she was about to cause.

Even he had been surprised when she emerged from the washroom dressed in the high-waisted navy blue slacks, which she paired with a loose white blouse trimmed in light blue eyelet lace as she had seen on the model in Bergdorf Goodman. The ensemble had been inspired by sailor outfits, she had been told, a whimsical take on the new hobby of yachting and a reversal of a war-time uniform into a symbol of pleasure and respite. The billowing top with lace added a bit of femininity to the look, and Mary added a light pink belt and a duskier rose-colored cloche to accentuate this further. Coupled with her high shoes and tiny, gleaming gold and topaz brooch, she had evaluated herself in the mirror and decided the whole thing was quite feminine – after all, she did not know many men that wore pink and heels and jewelry. She just hoped others would agree. Though the clerk had assured her Coco Chanel herself wore such an ensemble all the time in Paris, Mary had imagined when she bought the trousers that they would be useful for lounging around the house on a quiet afternoon or practical for walks in the country. She had not even contemplated the idea of wearing them out, _in public_. But considering the previous night, when handstands and barneymugging we de rigueur amongst high society, she decided that everyone may be more experienced than she was at life but she could be equally daring.

"That's an interesting fashion item," Richard had commented as she busied herself moving things from her evening bag to her brown leather envelope day clutch. He had quickly recovered his facial expression from surprise to a poker-faced kind of cool, but Mary had to smile as she heard him struggle to keep his tone even and free of any judgments either in favor or against.

"Boys haircuts and men's trousers," she explained, "it's the latest thing in Paris."

"They're very fetching, and I'm sure they'll be a hit in Newport," he said diplomatically, "but do you think Bif and his rural Connecticut ilk will appreciate your rebellion?"

"Richard Carlisle," she said, turning to face him, "what a snob! You're as bad as those English suffragettes who believe only women of property and wealth should be able to vote." She had not intended to make a political statement with her choice of outfit, but she found one forming in her mind regardless. "Liberation is useless if it's only confined to the enclaves of the elite; rebellion should be acceptable everywhere!"

He chuckled fondly at her sudden outburst. "More letters from Sybil?"

"This _will_ be worth writing her about. A welcome relief from my ordinary fashion narratives into the realm of the political."

"Are you trying to make a political point?" he clarified.

"Not really," she confessed, "but everyone here thinks they're very sophisticated. Maybe I want to test that theory."

"In that case, I don't think you'll be disappointed."

She laughed with a slight apprehension. "If you're so sure I'm about to be martyred, then perhaps you'll reconsider and come out with us."

"If anyone can defend themselves, it's you," Richard joked. "One withering look and a biting retort and your detractors will be running for the hills – you don't need my help."

"You just don't want to be subjected to the chattering flappers for an entire afternoon."

"That too."

It was easy to be brave with Richard, upstairs in their cozy room joking about the shockwaves she was about to send through the backwater village they were going to visit. But this would be the real test.

Now, with Louise and her friends' reaction, Mary had a full set of astonished companions, and her competitive side took a great satisfaction being able to stun these most daring of her peers. The side of her that wanted nothing more than to be innocuous, the picture of aristocratic respectability, was less sure. Fortunately the competitive side won out.

"What?" she asked, meeting their surprised silence with a puzzled look as she walked to the car. "Is my hat crooked?"

Louise was the first to recover herself. "No it's lovely," she assured her. "In fact I've never seen one quite like it!"

The automobile was an olive green Winton from 1916, a terrible wagon of a car that looked big enough to fit four generations of a family in one go. It was practical in every respect: plenty of seating and storage, a color to mask mud and dirt, cheaply made in with economy in mind. How distasteful, Mary thought to herself. Louise and her group made an especially interesting picture as they all climbed in, their glamour fading slightly in the sun and the mediocrity of the obviously borrowed family car.

As soon as Mary had settled herself in the backseat, Louise hit the gas and they bolted off in a cloud of dust onto the highway, her cousin's foot apparently as leaded as Richard's and her enthusiasm for the Winton no less than his for the Isotta, in a different way. "You could bang this thing up until it's a heap of a wreck even Bif couldn't fix, and it would still run," Louise said over her shoulder; Mary grabbed the arm of her seat as they took a particularly sharp corner with precarious speed. She had wondered before they left England if she would survive their trip to America; now she wondered even more. But there was no going back – that seemed to be Louise's motto in life, and Mary felt obligated to adopt a similar attitude for the afternoon.

They arrived a short few minutes later, though some of the screeching turns and squealing tires made the journey feel like a miniature eternity. Their destination was Mystic, a charming old harbor town separated by a single-lane drawbridge that lowered up and down constantly to let tall masts of the sailboats pass through on their way to the ocean, the picture perfect East Coast seaport that seemed not to have changed very much for the last hundred years. How appropriate for her sailor-inspired outfit, Mary thought to herself; perhaps here a maritime uniform would not even merit a second glance.

The main street started on one side of the river and crossed the bridge onto the other, so Louise steered the car into the queue to cross to the denser section of the street, inching past wooden-fronted shops painted in various pastels and shades of white that reflected onto the sparkling water as they waited for the bridge to lower. The town was busy, but not overly so, but they did have to wait for a large sailboat to pass between the broken roadway. When they finally reached the other side, Louise slotted into an angled parking space in front of a simple storefront with a sign featuring a fork and spoon: "Let's get something to eat," she suggested in a tone that was more an instruction, "I'm starving!"

Mary's prediction that the flapper children would be bright and chipper in the morning seemed to be far off the mark in Reggie and Ella's case, and they seemed much worse for wear than the ever-energetic Louise. Neither had said so much as two words from the front porch of the roadhouse to the front door of the restaurant, and Mary gathered their early morning dancing had continued long into the dawn light.

"What time did you retire?" she asked Ella, who greeted her with a vacant stare from under the shaded brim of her hat.

"I went up around 7," Reggie interjected, his drawn out syllables extended further by a lack of sleep, "but you and the saxophonist were still ordering another round when we finally called it a night," he said in Ella's direction.

"The saxophonist?" Louise asked as she started to open the restaurant door. "Where was I?"

"In a clinch with Reggie, I presume," the black-haired girl answered, her paper-white skin slightly marred in the sunlight to reveal a healthier pallor underneath the powder and her new black frock faded a bit from the inky black velvet number from the night before.

"I do hate to miss things," Louise said, frustrated.

Fortunately the restaurant was empty as they walked through the front door and chose a booth by the window facing the street – Mary was not really prepared for a full-house audience just yet. The waitress at the counter barely looked up at their arrival and certainly did not gawk, so maybe this day out with her new trend would not be the trail by fire she had expected, she contemplated as she assessed the space. It was a typical American restaurant, like she had been told about on the crossing over from England, their dinner companions weaving complex images of the average American eatery in such sharp contrast to the crystal and mahogany splendor of the _Mauretania_. And this was the ideal example: beyond simple with Formica tabletops and ketchup on the table, the requisite bored waitress and the cliché menu. Mary was secretly delighted with the selection, as "typical American cafe" had been on her list of must-do's for their journey, though she would never admit to anything so gauche in this group of jaded aesthetes.

"Daytime is so boring," Ella began after they had ordered a variety of egg dishes and the expectedly weak coffee had arrived, giving her a bit of a jolt into the land of the living. "What could Richard possibly find to write about in the _day_" she asked Mary, "when everything exciting happens at night?"

"I wish I knew," she answered honestly. She was dying of curiosity.

"Perhaps he'll write about your outfit!" Louise exclaimed, finally letting her own curiosity get the better of her. "The only women I've seen wear trousers were out on Long Island during the war, on their way to work at the munitions factories."

"It's the latest thing in Europe," Mary replied, adopting her dismissive patrician tone.

"I remember when harem pants came out," Ella said. "I was sixteen and everyone was shocked. And then by the next season my mother and her friends were wearing them too."

"You girls can wear pants if you like," Reggie said, "and I bet you look better in them than your mothers. But I would look terrible in a dress and corset."

"I believe that's the point," Mary pointed out, sipping the watery coffee and deciding to change to tea. "No man would put up with the discomfort or impracticality of women's clothing. So we're stealing yours."

* * *

"I've been dying to find a beret," Louise said over the ringing bell that signaled their entrance into the hat shop. "All the magazines say you must have a beret this fall."

"Well we must follow the trends," Mary replied, with a small dose of sarcasm – there was nothing worse than someone who was _too _fashionable.

Reggie and Ella had broken away after lunch to inspect the sailboats – Ella's father was planning to purchase one so she promised to do some research, though Mary had extreme difficulty picturing the pale girl on any kind of sea excursion. She looked forward to such an adventure should the opportunity present itself in Newport, if only to satiate her curiosity about the variety of swimwear available in the girl's exclusively black wardrobe.

So far the shopping excursion had been relatively problem free. The young girl at the general store counter had been shocked into silence by Mary's outfit, but by the time they were ready to pay for their essentials she was ready to gush loudly about how breathtaking and heroic the trousers were, and Mary along with them for taking a stand for suffrage. Mary wasn't quite sure that pants equaled the right to vote, but she did not deprive the girl of her illusions. The older woman at the lingerie shop had been less silent and less gushing, instead unleashing a rant about young women today and the impropriety of short skirts and no corsets. But then Mary inquired whether the changing trends had negatively impacted the shop's business and the woman replied that yes, in fact, the decrease in demand for corsets was deeply hurting her profit margin. Louise suggested she should start selling women's trousers instead, and the shop owner did not seem opposed to it so long as "high society types like you will overpay for them." The girls assured her their compatriots would. And the jewelry shop proprietor had been markedly silent in his response. That is until Mary asked to see one of the brooches that caught her eye, a small gold frog set with four tourmaline stones, sparkling green amongst the more touristy-themed sailboats and seashell items under the glass counter, and the salesman warmed considerably. What a country, she thought to herself – one could get away with anything so long as one had the money to back it up.

Mary concluded that this was quite a good town to debut her new outfit, and the experience would make for some entertaining talking points on the Newport party circuit. After all, this was a far better indication of what ordinary people thought about rapid social change than any Newport dinner party would be.

"What do you think?" Louise asked as she tried on a brown felt beret, the color complimenting her short amber bob and her dark lipstick.

"Very chic. But try the burgundy," Mary said, spotting a panama hat on one of the shelves. "What about this for Richard?" She asked, holding it up so the light shone through the bits of straw as it poured through the shop's front window.

"Very chic," Louise replied with a smile as she tried on a mauve beret instead. "And necessary – all the men in Newport wear them; it's part of the uniform."

"I'm afraid this would be the equivalent of women's trousers back in London – utterly unacceptable!" Mary joked, removing her cloche to try the hat on herself and finding it comically outsized. She tipped the brim down further over one eye and made a face in the mirror imitating a gangster she had seen in a motion picture, though somehow she imagined real American gangsters did not wear straw.

"Personally I think it makes all the Newport boys look like members of some outsized barbershop quartet," Louise opined. "They congregate together and roam the lawn parties in packs so all you really see is a bunch of straw hats coming in your direction, and every time I see a group I expect them to burst into a rendition of 'Sweet Adeline.'"

"Or maybe 'Sweet Louise,'" Mary replied. "Well now I have to buy it."

The other girl abandoned the beret selection and picked out an orange-patterned scarf instead, wrapping it over her wavy hair so just a curl or two peeked out from the bright accessory. "Rather good for cars with no tops," she commented as she studied her reflection. "You know, I have to say, Mary, I'm really surprised at you."

"The barbershop quartet look doesn't suit me?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Not that," Louise said. "It's just… when I left you the after my visit to England, I was absolutely sure that the next time I saw you, you would be Lady Grantham of Downton, with a brood of well-behaved English children and a stuffy gentry husband who talked about barn renovations and spent afternoons roaming the grounds with a faithful hound."

Mary had to snort at the picture, her life now so different than the perfect country existence she had imagined for herself before the war.

"And I would go and visit you," Louise continued, "and feel just a little bit sorry for you, and you would feel just a little bit sorry for me, and we'd both feel just a little bit better about our completely different life choices."

"Don't forget you almost went that route too," Mary objected, though she did not intend the retort in a mean-spirited way – Louise had a candor about these things that she actually found quite charming. "The whole point of you being in England was to land yourself an English husband and an estate too."

"But I didn't," Louise smirked. "And you didn't either!" she said with delight.

"I sort of did," Mary admitted, "I did get married, and we do have an estate in Yorkshire. Though I think we're both starting to reconsider that…" she mused.

"Is it near Downton?"

Mary looked up from under the straw brim sheepishly. "It's next door."

They both shared a laugh at this absurdity. "You were always confused, dear. You don't marry to stay with your family; you marry to get away from them!"

"I thought then that you married for a position, a place in respectable society," she replied as she removed the panama hat and took it to the register.

"Maybe you get married for love," a quiet voice interjected. Mary looked up and realized it belonged to the shop assistant behind the counter, a young woman about their age with delicate features and a round face. "Sorry," the girl added, "I didn't mean to overhear."

"No, no! Love is for fooling around," Louise corrected emphatically. "And marriage is for… well, it's not for everybody."

"Don't mind her," Mary told the girl, "she is crusading for freedom, one person at a time."

"I am." Louise confirmed the fact like a revelation, as if it was the first time she had thought about it in those terms. "And did I convert you?"

"I don't need your help for liberation," Mary replied with a raised eyebrow. "Or do you know many women who wear trousers?"

* * *

Twilight was beginning to set in and it was nearly time for supper when they pulled the Winton back into the roadhouse parking lot. The inn was even busier than the night before, with people spilling out onto the front porch and music blaring from the windows. Mary and Louise were wedged into the backseat with their packages, each having decided they would rather secure their haul personally than risk anything flying out on the breeze and resulting in the loss of a precious new item. Ella sat up front, to navigate, while Reggie was behind the wheel after insisting on driving back to everyone's great relief and Louise's great annoyance. Once parked, he got out to assist the ladies with their goods, when Mary caught a New England accent as sharp as an icepick cut across the parking lot.

"It's really a gasket cap off a Model T!" Bif's voice explained with great pride, "but it works real swell in your fancy Eye-saatah." Mary allowed that the Isotta was not the easiest of names to pronounce; however, she had yet to hear it gotten so outstandingly wrong.

Richard and the mechanic were walking in the direction of the garage, and the two making quite a pair: Richard's tall form looking especially elegant in his white casual shirtsleeves and dark cuffed pants of the latest style as he towered at least a foot over the stocky and unkempt Bif, whose oil-stained gray overalls were a wrinkled example of function over fashion. From their gestures she could tell Bif was keen to go into even greater detail about the superiority of American parts for European automobiles, while Richard impatiently tried to move on to payment and getting the keys.

"So it's all ready to go, Mr. Carlisle."

Mary smirked at the salutation, imagining her husband had not heard that in quite a while.

"That's great news," Richard replied as they continued into the office.

Mary was torn between relief and regret that they would soon be on their way. While she did not care about another night carousing in the bar, she had actually been looking forward to another morning in their quiet corner room on the third floor, here in this carefree limbo between New York and Newport, where nothing anyone said or did mattered very much and everything seemed meaningless in the loveliest way. This stop-off was much like the _Mauretania_, a transitory space where there was nothing but time, a place to spend the morning talking in bed and exchanging reminiscences with the quiet laughter at one's own travails that can only come from being separated from them by a safe distance. A place to experiment with the latest dance steps, sometimes unsuccessfully. A place to… well, she couldn't quite bring herself to use Richard's phrase; but a place to make love at dawn as the sun rose over some unfamiliar horizon, greeting them with glorious possibility. Newport and New York were not bad; they were just destinations. And for the first time in her life, Mary was beginning to enjoy the journey.

After asking Louise to take her packages to the front desk, she followed in the direction of the garage to inspect the Isotta. It was parked in one of the repair bays, facing an open door to the road; soon it would be back on the tarmac as it was meant to be.

Hearing Richard and Bif settling the bill in the office, she approached the car and looked it over for damage. Mary ran her hand over the shiny apple-green paint of the hubcap, following the curve over the wheel and across the hood up to the windscreen, over the edge of the rolled-down window trimmed in gleaming brass, to touch the uneven bumps of the ostrich-skin upholstery. It was so superior to Louise's Winton, she could hardly believe they were the same species of machine – while the Winton was average and exaggerated and almost cartoony in its strangely angled proportions, its shot side walls expanding out to the overly-stretched roof in a V-shape that made it seem always like an eager dog precariously perched on its hind-legs, the Isotta was low-slung and drawn-out and elegant. The Winton was odd and middle-class and looked like a compromise. The Isotta was a racer with a pedigree, and all the grandeur and sophistication of something unafraid to be what it really was.

Much to her surprise, Mary was as in love with the automobile as Richard was. When he had first ordered it, she was less than impressed – he showed her the brochure and it looked much like any other car. Worse, he had ordered it in direct response to her setting a final, specific wedding date. Mary saw the Isotta as his celebration of the reality of the whole thing, and though she was less reluctant about their marriage than she had been, the tangible object became a symbol in her mind for not looking back, and she was not completely sure she was ready for it. But now, so many miles removed from England and her past doubts, she had come to see why Richard was so taken with the speedy, advanced automobile. It was like freedom; it would take them anywhere they chose to go; and it would take them there in great style. And even when it broke down – which she still blamed Richard for more than the car – it led to some adventure that was entirely new to both of them.

Richard appeared beside her with the key in his hand and relief in his eyes: their precious automobile was going to be alright. Mary laughed affectionately at his concern and opened the car door, starting to climb in.

"I don't think we'll have time to make it to Newport at a reasonable hour tonight," he began.

"No, but we do have time to avoid dinner with the bright young things and their dimming concoctions." He grinned at her comment and closed the door after her, striding around to the driver's side to take the wheel, deferring to her choice without question. "Not that I object to a bit of fun," she continued, "but I did spend the whole day with them."

"I'm sure their kind of fun will be there when we return," Richard said as he cranked the engine. He hit the gas and the car peeled off through the gravel and onto the road in the opposite direction from where they had just come.

"Please!" Mary said, "I've survived several near-crashes today, can we not have another?"

"Just testing to –"

"– see how she handles," Mary finished for him. "You must really like Bif and his towing truck," she said. "You seem so eager to see them again."

He cast a dazzling smile in her direction, and she forgot her wish that he would watch the road. "Can you blame me," he asked, "when a breakdown leads to such interesting possibilities?"

* * *

**The End.  
**


End file.
